George Barris Tells His Side Of Batmobile Tiff

This can't be denied: As the self-proclaimed King of the Kalifornia Kustomizers, no one has had a closer, more long-lasting relationship with Hollywood's cars than George Barris.

Example? Forty-eight years ago, when actor James Dean wanted racing numbers and his nickname ("Little Bastard") painted on his beloved 1955 Porsche, Dean took the car to George Barris.

And after Dean was killed in the Porsche, George Barris bought what was left of the car for $2,500. The car has been missing since 1960. It was last seen in Florida. Just part of the legend that was James Dean, and is George Barris.

Barris and his company are responsible for countless movie and TV cars, ranging from the Drag-U-La hot rod on The Munsters, to the Ford Torino to be used in the big-screen remake of Starsky & Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. And he has built cars for stars such as Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Liberace, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Farrah Fawcett -- for her, he built the "Foxy Vette," a 1970 green Chevrolet Corvette with a fur interior, CB radio and television.

And, of course, there's the Batmobile.

These past few weeks, we've been chronicling the tale of the Batmobile sold last month at a closeout auction from the now-defunct Klassix Auto Attraction museum in Daytona Beach. The museum's collection was essentially built around a Batmobile from the 1966 TV series, bought directly from George Barris.

DeVoe Moore, a collector from Tallahassee, bought the car for $189,750 to put in his museum.

Moore knew that this was not the original Batmobile, a vehicle Barris built from a retired 1955 Lincoln show car called the Futura. Barris owns that car, and it isn't for sale. But Moore says he thought it was one of the three original "duplicate" cars Barris built to capitalize on the TV show's unexpected success. It is not.

Some people who spend way too much time studying such things suggest the Batmobile bought by Moore was built by a now-deceased auto customizer named Bob Butts, who then sold the car to Barris, who then sold it to Klassix. The suggestion has been made that this car might have been built as recently as in the mid-1990s and consequently has zero historical value. Lacking historical value, the car would be worth maybe $80,000. DeVoe Moore wants a refund.

George Barris' honesty has been called into question. Barris, 76, isn't pleased.

Here is what he says is the history of the Klassix car: "We built it in the late 1960s, to help promote the Batmobile movie. After that, it just sat." When the people at Klassix said they wanted to buy a Batmobile, he sent it to Bob Butts to have some work done on it. "That isn't unusual -- we're so busy here we often send work out to be done at other shops."

Like all the replicas, Barris says, this one was built in a big hurry, never designed to last longer than its tour of duty, which is usually measured in weeks or months, not decades. What Klassix got, Barris says, is one of the nicest Batmobiles there is, something not denied by even the experts.

Besides, Barris says, it's tough to trace who built what -- all the Batmobiles constantly needed work, and parts were always being changed out. Even the original -- the Lincoln-based Batmobile's 1955 chassis literally broke, he said, under the rigors of filming the TV show, so under that body is not a Lincoln, but a Ford from the mid-1960s.

So we can forgive George Barris if he can't recall the brand of pistons from the engine in Liberace's limousine. Exactly how many cars has your shop built, George?

"We kept count up until the late 1950s," he says. "When we hit a thousand, we quit counting."